Unlikely rock star Dan Deacon brings irresistible dance party to Philly

Jonathan Valania, FOR THE INQUIRER Posted: Friday, November 16, 2012, 10:54 AM

On record, acclaimed Baltimore-based futurist Dan Deacon sounds like Philip Glass on Red Bull. A lot of Red Bull.

Live, he resembles nothing so much as a hip, wise-cracking camp counselor DJing a dance party for people who can't really dance. His name may not ring a bell but for people under 30 he is Santa Claus with a wave-function generator. And last night he came to town - Union Transfer, to be exact - after a three-year absence from area stages, to promote America, his album-length meditation on the national soul.

Bulky, bearded and balding, rocking a droopy T-shirt and his trademark red Sally Jessy Raphael frames, the 31-year-old Deacon looks more like a roadie than a rock star. And yet he is. Taking the stage to the rock-operatic strains of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," during which the near-capacity crowd sang along with every word, Deacon started off the show with an absurdist self-actualization exercise that somehow incorporated your Netflix queue, a mythical Criterion Collection edition of Deuce Bigelow, and "wafers, delicious wafers," before launching into the freaky tribal stomp of "Of the Mountains."

This set the agenda for the rest of the night: prismatic, psychotropic electronica combined with giddy group exercises that required and received full audience participation. During "Konono Ripoff No. 1" he had the crowd form a giant circle for a tag-team dance contest in the middle, with each dancer getting 10 seconds to bust a move. For "Crash Jam" he arranged the crowd Busby Berkeley-style to create a giant blooming lotus.

For "Guilford Avenue Bridge," a song that sounded, I kid you not, like two rusting mechanical jackasses locked in sweaty death match, he had the audience form a human tunnel that snaked from the lip of the stage up to the balcony and back. For "True Thrush" he had the crowd download his own Dan Deacon app that turned their smart phones into an amazing technicolor dream machine.

Whatever subtlety and variation Deacon's music loses in a live setting, he more than makes up for it with visceral, chest-thumping heft, not to mention all the gimmicky but grin-inducing theatrics to which no human in attendance with a functioning soul, appetite for fun and a working sense of humor was immune.

Jonathan Valania is editor-in-chief of Phawker.com.

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Unlikely rock star Dan Deacon brings irresistible dance party to Philly